By Nii-San Tsuru

For as long as people can remember, the Prius has been a controversial car in the enthusiast community. However after the global pandemic and extreme rise in gas prices everywhere in the US, could it finally be accepted in with its updated styling?

Up until this last generation, all Priuses suffered the same complaints from car enthusiasts. It got by with either extremely bland or ugly styling, in the 4th gen specifically, and how slow it was with the second generation having an almost 12 second 0-60 (0-100kph). It was a general consensus that the Prius could never be “cool” by common definition.

However Toyota decided “hey lets throw some pizzazz at it”. Then boom the 5th gen appeared, with an overall extremely sleek, stylish design, a well done interior, and 7.1 second 0-60 time. It’s become a proper little 4 door hatch from a car you would rather walk than steal.

With this new speedy Prius they didn’t skip out on the main selling point of it, Gas mileage. Even with its 198hp under its hood The 2023 Prius can do an astonishing 57 combined mpg according to toyota. With this it shows even more how much toyota stepped up to making this appealing to buyers who overlooked the Prius initially.

Now, with that being said you may be wondering.

Well Tsuru yeah we get its it’s cool and all, but why should I as a car enthusiast ever consider the damn thing? According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), normal gasoline has gone up a dollar a gallon nationwide from 2019. With that jump and current inflation of other important goods, the ability to afford a quick or gas guzzling anything is becoming more and more unreasonable as time goes on. Even with this, of course, car enthusiasts want to have fun and in order to do so we should explore gas saving options that we haven’t thought about previously.

Enter the “cool” Prius. Now, perhaps, the perfect car for enthusiasts.